You're correct Ella. The salting bit was thrown out long ago, although some people still swear by it. It really does very little, & is quite ridiculous when you think about it. If you leave the salt on, your eggplant ends up uber-salty. If you rinse it off, like most instructions tell you to do, you're just adding back the moisture that the salt was supposed to draw out. And it is the moisture that the salt draws out - not any bitterness. If your eggplant was bitter to begin with, salting won't help it except for perhaps masking it a little.

Good fresh eggplant - especially if from your own garden - definitely does not need any pre-salting prep. The gazillion cultures that consume far more eggplant than we do don't bother with it & never did. It's just something we picked up in order to deal with sub-standard supermarket produce.

I make an Afghan dish with eggplant a lot that we like to eat with Lebanese bread (Pita Bread).

It's basically brush the eggplant slices (which have been presalted/washed) with olive oil (or vegetable oil) and cook them on really low on the stove so they cook through and go slightly brown on the outside (not black). It's one layer at a time cooked so takes a while depending on how much you are making.

Then you need a tomato sauce which for me is basically

- saute a big onion chopped into small pieces in some olive oil
- Add a can of tomato (chopped up) and a tbs or two of tomato paste
- Add salt and pepper (and I add a bit of chili powder)
- Add some water but you want it fairly thick.
- Cook on low for about 10 minutes and set aside

In another bown combine yoghurt and thin it out slightly with some water. Add crushed garlic and salt to taste

Then basically it's assembled together by placing the eggplant slices in a layer at the bottom of a dish. Then spread some tomato sauce on but not too much. Just a thin layer. Keep layering the eggplant slices and tomato sauce and finish off with the leftover tomato sauce on top. Then pour the yoghurt mixture on top of that.

I eat it warm but you can eat it cold later too. Sometimes the yoghurt/eggplant/etc releases water on the edges after a while. I don't really care about that but you could also empty it a bit if it does. I just mix it back into the sauce.

You're correct Ella. The salting bit was thrown out long ago, although some people still swear by it. It really does very little, & is quite ridiculous when you think about it. If you leave the salt on, your eggplant ends up uber-salty. If you rinse it off, like most instructions tell you to do, you're just adding back the moisture that the salt was supposed to draw out. And it is the moisture that the salt draws out - not any bitterness. If your eggplant was bitter to begin with, salting won't help it except for perhaps masking it a little.

Good fresh eggplant - especially if from your own garden - definitely does not need any pre-salting prep. The gazillion cultures that consume far more eggplant than we do don't bother with it & never did. It's just something we picked up in order to deal with sub-standard supermarket produce.

interesting... I saw an Alton Brown episode on eggplant, I think less than a year ago, and there was a lot of talk about salting them. But as I mentioned in my post, the ones that I did not salt and just marinated and grilled came out way better than the one that I salted. I'm going to lay off the salt the next few times to see how it comes out.